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Rare Pictures of the Late Fidel Castro’s Meetings with Iranian Officials

on November 26, 2016 | 14:02:05

Fidel Castro, Cuba’s former president and leader of the Communist revolution, has died aged 90.

Castro’s brother and the nation’s President of several years, Raul, announced his death Friday on Cuban TV.

Castro toppled the government in 1959, introducing a Communist revolution. He defied the US for decades, surviving many assassination plots.

As the longest serving non-royal leader of the 20th Century, Castro has had close relations with Iran since the Middle Eastern country’s 1979 Islamic revolution, which overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and installed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the nation’s supreme leader.

In 1979, Castro became one of the first heads of state to recognize the Islamic Republic of Iran. Addressing then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, Castro insisted that there was ‘no contradiction between revolution and religion,’

Following the Iranian revolution, the U.S. established economic sanctions against the country. Since then, decades of mutual ideological enmity toward the U.S. have forged a strong bond between the two nations.

Over the last two decades, Castro fostered a unique relationship between a secular communist Cuba and Iran united by a common hatred of the United States and the liberal democratic West.

Since the Islamic Revolution, Castro has met several times with Iran’s presidents and supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei: